How to Create a Micro-Job Marketplace Like Fiverr: Features, Cost, Timeline

These days, freelancing is a potent alternative to regular full-time work. Therefore, the demand for it creates a huge market where gig-focused giants like Fiverr and Upwork dominate. They adopted a model that allowed independent contractors to be hired without redundant legwork.

In this article, we will discuss Fiverr and, specifically, how you can build a marketplace like it.

Why build a website like Fiverr?

Creating a platform similar to Fiverr is a beneficial idea. A marketplace for people to buy and sell services online can bring a huge profit if managed and built properly. But what makes building a website like Fiverr an enticing prospect?

• Meeting market demand. The upsurge of freelance culture has fueled the demand for online marketplaces where individuals can offer their expertise and find relevant gigs. Building a platform like Fiverr taps into this growing demand, allowing you to find a place under the sun in this niche.
• Empowering freelancers. Simply put, freelance work is always about seeking new opportunities. By creating a micro job marketplace like Fiverr, you can empower this search, providing freelancers even more space to showcase their expertise, find clientele, and monetize their skills.
• Catering to diverse services. If you simply check the sheer number of categories and job types listed on Fiverr, you will notice that a huge part of Fiverr's success lies in its ability to accommodate a wide array of services. These range from graphic and logo design and programming to writing and digital marketing. Building a similar platform will also allow you to cater to diverse niches and industries, ensuring there's something for everyone in the gig economy.
• Creating revenue streams. Websites like Fiverr have numerous monetization avenues. For instance, its marketplace business model involves transaction fees, premium memberships, featured listings, advertising, and more. Therefore, you can use these revenue streams to establish a sustainable business model and drive long-term profitability.

As you can see, the reasoning behind building a marketplace like Fiverr is based on the benefits it will provide. So why not discuss them in greater detail?

What are the benefits of freelance marketplaces?

Freelance marketplaces offer a range of benefits for both buyers (clients) and sellers (freelancers). But why do you need to know them? Understanding the benefits a dedicated freelance marketplace brings to both active parties of the platform (buyers and sellers) paves the way for growth. If you manage to cater to the needs of both parties, you can build a truly helpful platform that tackles issues on both sides.

Benefits for buyers (clients)

• Access to the diverse talent pool. Platforms like Fiverr provide buyers with access to a vast pool of freelancers from around the world. This way, they can find the best fit for the project in terms of skills, experience, and budget.
• Flexibility and scalability. Such marketplaces allow clients to hire freelancers on a project-by-project basis, allowing them to scale their workforce up or down as needed without the commitment of hiring full-time employees.
• Cost-effectiveness. Hiring freelancers through marketplaces can be more cost-effective than hiring full-time employees, as clients only pay for the specific services they need without incurring additional overhead costs like benefits and office space.
• Speed and efficiency. Freelance platforms streamline the hiring process, enabling clients to find and onboard freelancers quickly, saving time compared to traditional hiring methods.
• Specialized expertise. Clients can find freelancers with specialized skills and expertise that may be difficult to find locally, allowing them to access top talent regardless of geographical constraints.
• Risk mitigation. Many freelance platforms offer tools and features to help mitigate risks, such as escrow payment systems, freelancer ratings and reviews, and dispute resolution mechanisms, providing clients with added peace of mind.

Benefits for sellers (freelancers)

• Access to opportunities. Marketplaces like Fiverr provide freelancers with access to a large pool of potential clients and projects, increasing their opportunities for work and income generation.
• Flexibility and autonomy. Freelancers have the flexibility to choose the projects they want to work on, set their own schedules, and work from anywhere with an internet connection, providing greater autonomy and work-life balance.
• Portfolio building. Freelance platforms allow freelancers to showcase their work and build a portfolio, which can help attract new clients and opportunities.
• Diverse income streams. Freelancers can diversify their income streams by taking on multiple projects from different clients simultaneously, reducing dependency on any single source of income.
• Skill development. Working on a variety of projects for different clients can provide freelancers with opportunities to develop and refine their skills, gaining valuable experience and expertise over time.
• Networking and community. Many freelance platforms offer networking opportunities and community support through forums, groups, and events, allowing freelancers to connect with peers, share knowledge, and access resources and advice.

How freelance websites make money

In marketplaces, there is no unified business model canvas. Instead, they often comprise several monetization strategies. With different income sources, they can accumulate a higher income in the long run. Therefore, let’s cover several monetization strategies suitable for a marketplace like Fiverr.

Selling gigs

This strategy implies charging for each sale that takes place across your micro-job marketplace. In this regard, your options include setting a flat fee, a percentage-based fee, or both.

For example, Fiverr and Upwork fees are taken as a percentage of completed gigs. Also, there is a slight difference between these two platforms’ approaches.

With Fiverr, service fees are 5.5% of the purchase amount. However, for purchases under $75, an additional $2.50 small order fee will be applied.

With Upwork, fees are more straightforward. The platform charges a solid 10% fee from each earning a freelancer makes. Therefore, from a $400 payout, Upwork will take $40.

Gig promotion

This type of monetization is reasonably straightforward. Moreover, getting your gigs to prime locations in search results is an excellent way to boost your visibility on websites like Fiverr.

On Fiverr, a freelancer pays whenever a visitor clicks a content and a promoted gig displays. However, to avoid issues, Fiverr lets freelancers set up budget limits.

Subscription

Fiverr offers a subscription service called "Fiverr Pro Subscription" for businesses and individuals needing ongoing access to top-tier professionals.

Subscribers choose from different tiers for benefits like priority support and discounts on services. They gain regular access to vetted Pro sellers for their projects, enjoying flexibility, cost savings, and options for cancellation and renewal.

Custom pricing

On platforms like Fiverr, custom pricing allows sellers to offer tailored quotes for projects that don't fit into their standard service packages. To make it work, you must provide a space for buyers and sellers to negotiate.

For instance, allow sellers and buyers to discuss the project details, requirements, and scope to determine the work involved. Based on the project specifics, sellers then provide a custom price quote to the buyer. This quote may consider complexity, time investment, and additional services required beyond the seller's standard offerings.

Functionality for an online marketplace like Fiverr

Needless to mention that, marketplaces like Fiverr are very complex structures. To make everything work like a clockwork, every cog has to be accounted for. Therefore, there are many features you should implement when building a website like Fiverr. Let’s take a look.

Registration

An essential part of any marketplace, registration is a multi-purposeful feature. In the Fiverr-like marketplace context, it lets users sign up for buyers and sellers via separate pages. Additionally, accounts can be populated with all the required information, such as contact details, payment method, portfolio, or experience in the niche.

Project dashboard

This feature serves as the central hub where users (both buyers and sellers) manage their activities, projects, and account settings. Why is it practically a must-have?

First, it allows users to view a summary of their profile information, including their username, profile picture, bio, and any relevant statistics such as ratings or reviews.

Sellers can also see a list of their ongoing projects, including details such as project status, deadlines, and communication. Freelancers can track the progress of projects they're currently on.

Additionally, it provides financial Information, as users can view their earnings, pending payments, and transaction history.

Gigs list

Each freelance marketplace has a dedicated place where all the work is posted. On Fiverr, you simply need to choose a category in which you work and post a gig under it. The same goes for buyers who are looking for professionals in a particular niche.

On Upwork, things are different. For instance, freelancers need to create and fill out a form asking for their line of work, experience, and more. Then, their personal feed gets updated automatically, with new relevant projects popping up regularly.

User profiles

A profile is how users present themselves to the community. First of all, make distinctions between contractor and buyer profiles highly visible.

To fill out the profile on the freelance portal, users can provide the following information:

• Description that presents themselves to the community;
• Languages they are skilled in;
• Link to their personal website;
• Certifications. Lists of honors and awards;
• A skill map is an excellent way for contractors to stand out. Besides, putting job skills in the profile saves potential buyers time to get to know a freelancer.

Read also: Online Marketplace Design: Why UI/UX Matters

Search system

This feature is absolutely irreplaceable as it is used in many parts of your marketplace workflow. For instance, it allows users to find freelance services by categories, keywords, ratings, or other features as price range. On the other hand, freelancers can also search through potential clients, or even analyze their competition.

Another solid addition to the search system is an autocomplete. It predicts the user's query and reveals suggestions in dropdowns as the user types their request in the search bar.

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Payment system

In a work-centered marketplace, a reliable payment system is a must. It should be fast and secure, while also offering alternative payment methods. Also, multi-currency acceptance makes your site much more user-friendly as your users may come from different countries with their respective currencies.

Speaking of integrations, you can use popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, or Dwolla.

Communication

To help your customers avoid misunderstandings and get the job done correctly from the start, a messaging system is a must. Therefore, create an internal messaging system so that business owners and pre-selected contractors can discuss their projects.

Additionally, think about implementing features like file sharing, voice/video recording, and more. All these things can greatly simplify cooperation between two parties on the platform.

Review & feedback system

Provide the ability to rate and review services directly on your micro job marketplace. When developing such functionality, note that both freelancers and buyers should have the ability to leave feedback and reviews so that everything on your platform is balanced.

Along with user-written feedback, the 5-star rating is excellent for measuring client satisfaction. Aside from text and rating, a client may tell whether a contractor is to be recommended or not.

Additionally, to make the system trustworthy, once a review becomes public, moderators shouldn't change or remove it unless it violates the community standards.

Recommending reading: How to Build a Review Website Like Yelp

Two approaches to building a website like Fiverr

When it comes to creating a micro job marketplace, you may already see that it’s a huge amount of work that is difficult to cope with without preparation and planning. Therefore, there are two approaches you can choose from when creating a website like Fiverr.

Ready-made templates

With the boom of e-commerce marketplace development, it becomes easier to find an out-of-the-box solution that meets minimum requirements:

• Order management;
• Card management;
• Payment gateways;
• Search system;
• Fee handling.

On the one hand, it is a fast and more or less reliable way to create an online micro job marketplace. It can be hosted on a dedicated platform and works just fine for the most part.

However, developing SaaS applications isn’t enough for freelance services like Fiverr. Ready-made solutions will miss valuable features since your goal is not just to create a basic website. Importantly, it needs to have a community around it. And whereas developers tend to maintain the relevance of their templates, we highly recommend you choose another way.

Custom software development

Essentially, custom software development services are what we do and what we’re proud of. When it comes to building marketplaces, we know how to build them in neat milestones, all of which are completely clear to our clients.

With years of experience behind our backs, we know how to deliver a marketplace like Fiverr full of the needed features we cover today, namely messaging, an advanced search system, payment integrations, and more.

Additionally, keeping your marketplace up-to-date with the newest trends is another crucial thing to do. For instance, with mobile traffic demand increasing, you should keep up with the trend of mobile-friendly development. This trend, along with dozens of others, creates challenges when it comes to developing a freelance services marketplace. Fortunately, we know how to tackle them just fine.

Read also: Mobile-First Design: What Is It and How to Implement It

On a closing note, the difference between a ready-made solution and a custom-built one is evident. If you decide to build a marketplace, be it an Amazon-inspired one or a freelance platform like Fiverr, choosing out-of-the-box solutions would be a bad idea.

The level of functionality today’s users demand from platforms is a no match for ready-made platforms. Therefore, only a dedicated software development team can tackle it.

Looking to build a freelance marketplace platform?

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How much does it cost to build a website like Fiverr?

Creating an online marketplace for freelance services requires a solid investment. To be more precise, we took the average rate of development companies in Eastern Europe, which is $50/hour.

Below, you can see how much all particular features cost based on the mentioned hourly rate.

However, the final cost will depend on your development partner's rates and the functionality you choose to include.

Besides, you should analyze much more information to know precisely how much it costs to run a website like Fiverr. For example, this includes platform maintenance and support, hosting, ads, etc. Thus, the price we provide is an estimated price specifically for building a platform.

Why choose Codica to create a micro-job website

Since 2015, at Codica, we have been delivering high-quality software solutions across many domains, including finance, travel, vehicle rental, insurance, and more.

One notable example of a marketplace platform we built is Trade A Boat. Being a boat selling marketplace, Trade A Boat boasts all possible functionality needed for a marketplace to efficiently operate and drive sales.

Working on Trade A Boat, we developed a sleek, high-performance marketplace. With a huge emphasis on UI/UX design services, we enhanced rankings and grew user traffic on the platform.

Additionally, we established a seamless data synchronization between the boat marketplace and CDS platform, integrating diverse dealer CMS/CRM inventory systems nationwide. To sum up, here’s a final product overview.

Summary

Once considered an addition to a more "serious" job, freelancing is a big deal nowadays. Websites like Fiverr proved that a marketplace concept can be cleverly transformed into a freelance portal. Their clear structure made it extremely easy for people to find services in seconds.

We hope that the tips and ideas outlined in this article will be of great help once you start building a freelance marketplace. Finding a starting point, however, can be challenging. Thus, a detailed look at our portfolio can definitely bring more certainty to the picture. Alternatively, once you’re ready, feel free to contact us, and our expert team will do everything possible to realize your micro job marketplace idea.